January 20, 2009

I really wish they had had the balls to choose a rapper to deliver the inaugural poem. It took me a long time to get used to it, but now I think rap is where the living poetry's gone. (Only 2 decades late, me. LOL.) Of course a lot of it's bad or gross, but some of it is really, really good, forceful and inventive. I don't know rappers well enough to say who it should have been, but imagine -- it could've been memorable.

I agree. The real vigor of poetry is rap. It has a powerful hold on people. That means something. How cool it would have been if Obama had dared to go there. But, no, we had to have a decorous, "diverse" woman. Too predictable.

Not one of his greatest speeches. The soaring bits did not gel with the hard bits on policy. Maybe it was the occasion. But now that the time for speeches has ended and the time for deeds has come, it might have been a wise move on Obama's part to lower the fever. Now it's for reality.

some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Notice what's missing?

Who he excluded?

Would it have killed him to mention the men and women who have died in Afghanistan or Iraq?

Probably amongst those of his party he was too afraid....or who knows why but they were excluded.

I think Biden also had trouble repeating his oath accurately. I don't have a tape to recheck it. I believe he said "and" once when he was supposed to have said "that." Watching this whole choreographed charade, I couldn't help thinking, "clowns to the left of me Jokers to the right, here I am." And when I think "Joker" I also have visions of Heath Ledger. God bless and help America. If Obama's inaugural address is any kind of indicator, it's going to be a very rough road ahead. I'd like to be charitable, but I must say that Obama's inaugural speech showed no class at all. It was also chalk full of platitudes and abstractions. I think it was about half over when I had to stop watching.

They could have skipped the poet at the end. I don't like stream-of-consciousness masquerading as poetry. Poetry is supposed to have rhyme and meter. It's like abstract art where somebody sloshes paint on a canvas. Anyone can do that. Well, I'll say it: The emperor has no clothes, and the poet has no poetry.

@chickenlittle: I beg to disagree. That's just it: Power shifted without revolution. That, in the history of civilization, is about as close to miraculous as anything can be. I thank our Founders... and the brave men and women who have defended our Constitution 200+ years.

Yeah, they definitely could have skipped that poet. If he wanted an African-American poet, I don't know why he didn't choose Rita Dove. Not only is she better known, she's much more talented in my estimation.

Overall, it sounded more like regurgitated bits and pieces of his campaign speeches, awkwardly welded together with some storm imagery (rather than "yes we can"). For those of us with decoder rings, there were many off-putting backhanded swipes at the Bush Administration. (Though to everyone else who just wanted to see the celebrity President take his oath, it will have seemed non-partisan.)

I was hoping for an inauguration address rather than a campaign speech. Most striking for me was the lack of reaction from the immense crowd. I was expecting the President to provide sweeping, inspiring rhetoric that would be interrupted every 20 seconds by cheers and applause. Instead, the campaign-like speech hit the crowd with a dull "thud"; kind of like, "Oh yeah, this... We've heard this before...Nothing new here."

I was also struck by how many people started leaving right after his speech....As though it was a Paris Hilton sighting that was now over.

My thought was that Pres. Obama knew he was talking to both our enemies and our envious friends overseas. They must be his next targeted audience. there's So, let's celebrate today and be patient as this new Age for America spreads its wings and learns to fly right. A house divided against itself cannot stand, someone once pointed out. There is now a real hope that we can stand together, which is something you don't see anywhere else today among the world's great ethnically diverse nation states.

I know that the Bushes made it easier, by moving out their tschokes way way ahead of schedule (mid-summer), but given that they are at the epicentre of the drama in DC, they are the last people who will watch the Inauguration. Too busy arranging Mrs. Robinson's chamberpot.

I watched JFK's inaugural address with my father. I was 18 years old and quite taken with Kennedy's speech. My father, a Republican but flexible enough that he supported McGovern in 1968, was infuriated that Kennedy did not acknowledge or thank Eisenhower.

It's an impossible thing to be the inaugural poet. Robert Frost wrote a little known poem for the event titled "Dedication" but in the glare of sun on snow he couldn't read it. So, instead, he recited one of his great poems from memory.

That should have been the end of that. The inaugural speech is the place for poetry and the president is the one to deliver it. The professional poet's strange coda will always be anticlimatic.

Oh nooooooooo. Cue Crooks and Liars. Chris Wallace of FNC is making a joke about Barack Obama not really being the President, because he mangled the Oath -- and being the stupid literalists that liberals turn into with anything right-wing, they will say he meant this seriously.

I didn't take the bits about hope over fear, or putting away childish things, as necessarily referring to the campaign or the previous administration, though I suppose one could.

What I did notice is that, as in his election night speech, Obama was very careful to say that we support foreigners who want "peace" and "dignity." We do not support foreigners who want "democracy" or "freedom." I guess we will try that policy for a while, until it blows up in our faces, and then go back to the policy of trying to export democracy and freedom, which won't work either.

I wish that we would make these policy changes with a little less self-righteousness, but I don't think I will get my wish.

Obama aimed slightly low with his rhetoric--that is, the inflated expectations of matchless lyricism promoted by his fan base among the mainstream media were, he realized, a sort of trap. This tactic of not straining for effect was more evidence, in my view, of the guy's smarts.

One predictable note: I see Chris Matthews highlighted the speech's line about America not compromising its values in its self-defense. Clearly Obama threw out the reference as a sop to the MSNBC-Andrew Sullivan ninnies who see Bush's America as an obsessive gulag of torture and state-sanctioned private surveillance--and lo, Matthews took the bait, swallowed it, and then triumphantly regurgitated it whole to his rapt viewers that they might all share a taste. So to speak . .

I know that the Bushes made it easier, by moving out their tschokes way way ahead of schedule (mid-summer), but given that they are at the epicentre of the drama in DC, they are the last people who will watch the Inauguration. Too busy arranging Mrs. Robinson's chamberpot. "

EDH, I tried to find the Lowery transcript, without success so far. :(

But I did see on USA Today, that those of us who are not aware, might've missed this fact.

After Obama's inspirational speech, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon and a pastor known to speak his mind to power, opened his benediction with the first words of the Negro National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears...

Terrific. Not only a racist, strange benediction, but one which continues to be gasp-making in its divisiveness.

Whatever it was, it was a fine moment and Obama, in actors' lingo, delivered the moment. I don't know if he made it to the Presidency riding a bubble of luck or a wave of destiny, but he rode it gracefully. Even the botched oath and that frozen look on his face when came out into the sunlight enhanced the moment. It emphasized the strain and clumsiness involved in making that last step of ascent.....Tomorrow it will be sermons and soda water and Rush Limbaugh, but today was splendid and hopeful.

Obama aimed slightly low with his rhetoric--that is, the inflated expectations of matchless lyricism promoted by his fan base among the mainstream media were, he realized, a sort of trap. This tactic of not straining for effect was more evidence, in my view, of the guy's smarts.

Agreed.

His main message--because he put it early in the speech--was get to work, stop bickering and playing one up, face the tough issues rather than avoiding them.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. Say Amen'...

He made it clear he was against communism, and he did say that there were soldiers right now who were in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are on patrol, and deserve our thoughtful thanks. Obama will be ok, and we don't need to be like the psychotic liberal cicada chorus. Those people are mentally ill. We don't need to mimic them. It's ok to love Barack.

Not liking the president is like not liking your mom and dad. It's strictly an adolescent phenom. Most of the left is stuck in that phase, and they will start to do that to Barack, too, as soon as it's clear to them that he's really in charge.

I really wish they had had the balls to choose a rapper to deliver the inaugural poem. It took me a long time to get used to it, but now I think rap is where the living poetry's gone. (Only 2 decades late, me. LOL.) Of course a lot of it's bad or gross, but some of it is really, really good, forceful and inventive. I don't know rappers well enough to say who it should have been, but imagine -- it could've been memorable.

Why should I support President Obama when folks like Michael and AlphaLiberal would not support President Bush in 2000 or 2004?

I got behind Bush after 9-11. It pained me greatly to do so. And, I kept my differences to his policies and exercise of Presidential powers. Wasn't one for calling him a "chimp."

And I'm not asking you to support Obama's policies blindly. Obama isn't either.

Obama is asking us all to put the recriminations and petty partisan warfare of the past behind us. To disagree civilly (you know, don't leap to insult people you disagree with? will you people here ever learn that?), but to listen to each other.

I'm working on it, but I don't expect the right wing to put country before party. I expect they will try to drive Obama from office, as they tried with Clinton.

The helicopter is swinging out over the Mall first instead of heading directly to Andrews. Surely the Bushes can’t hear the crowd below, but the chant is one that sports fans jeer to the opposing team: “Na Na Na Na/Na Na Na Na/Hey Hey Hey/Good-bye.”

I really did get distracted because there was a point of his speech where I got lost.

I was more attentive at the beginning and he was talking about those that have died in war.

I know it might have been a historical perspective but if you have a loved one that has died over in Iraq or Afghanistan-they have made this country possible today-and they deserve their place in history.

It would have been nice for them to have made the list upfront-a priority.

Again if he mentioned Afghanistan or Iraqi war dead-I missed it-honestly.

Me and a man was workin' side by sideThis is what it meantThey was paying him a dollar an hourAnd they was paying me fifty centThey said if you was white, 't should be all rightIf you was brown, could stick aroundBut as you black, m-mm boy, git back git back git back

I hope when sweet victoryWith my plough and hoeNow I want you to tell me brotherWhat you gonna do about the old Jim Crow?Now if you was white, should be all rightIf you was brown, could stick aroundBut if you black, whoa brother, git back git back git back

Madawaskan, he didn't mention those who had died in Iraq or in Afghanistan, but he did mention the soldiers there who are on patrol. I can't remember the precise terms he used, but it was respectful.

He didn't just diss them at least.

He couldn't name every little conflict: and for those who died in Grenada, and for those who died in the Panama Canal zone, and for those who died in the drug battles in the jungles of Venezuela, etc., would have probably gotten too long.

Allusion ashmoozan. Jim Crow was dying in the 1950's and was effectively dead by the mid-60's. You wanna experience Jim Crow? Be a heterosexual white male passed over by minorities of every color and sexual persuasion at the federal or state or local gummint hiring office. Hey, you liberals wanna play your neverending insane guilt games, go right ahead. But you're doing it on my dime and soon your whole house of cards is going to collapse into the first diversity depression. Then your giant social engineering schemes will come to a halt because there won't be any more of my dimes left to steal.

It seems the investigative press missed out on two stories on Gov. Blogo and Gov. Spitzer. They were all surprised how these men can be so corrupt.

I doubt CNN will break any news stories on corruption in the cabinet or the Legistlative branch when it happens. It is always easier to kick a Republican then to "speak Truth to Power" when a democrat is in office.

Ripic, I am a heterosexual white male, but if you think the status of hetro white males is even remotely parallel to that of blacks under Jim Crow--well, there is just no hope for you.

This might not be a bad day to print a summary of some of the Jim Crow laws, just to remember:

EDUCATION

Florida: The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately.

Kentucky: The children of white and colored races committed to reform schools shall be kept entirely separate from each other.

Mississippi: Separate schools shall be maintained for the children of the white and colored races.

Mississippi: Separate free schools shall be established for the education of children of African descent; and it shall be unlawful for any colored child to attend any white school, or any white child to attend a colored school.

New Mexico: Separate rooms shall be provided for the teaching of pupils of African descent, and such pupils may not be admitted to the school rooms occupied and used by pupils of Caucasian or other descent.

North Carolina: School textbooks shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

ENTERTAINMENT

Alabama: It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided.

Alabama: It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other at any game of pool or billiards.

Alabama: Every employer of white or negro males shall provide for such white or negro males reasonably accessible and separate toilet facilities.

Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct a restaurant, shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room or under the same license.

Georgia: It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race.

Georgia: All persons licensed to conduct the business of selling beer or wine...shall serve either white people exclusively or colored people exclusively and shall not sell to the two races within the same room at any time.

Louisiana: All circuses, shows, and tent exhibitions, to which the attendance of more than one race is invited shall provide not less than two ticket offices and not less than two entrances.

Virginia: Any public hall, theatre, opera house, motion picture show or place of public entertainment which is attended by both white and colored persons shall separate the white race and the colored race.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Mississippi: Any person guilty of printing, publishing or circulating matter urging or presenting arguments in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between whites and negroes, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

HEALTH CARE

Alabama: No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in which negro men are placed.

Louisiana: The board of trustees shall maintain a separate building, on separate grounds, for the admission, care, instruction, and support of all blind persons of the colored or black race.

Mississippi: There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every hospital maintained by the state for treatment of white and colored patients separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall be used by the race only for which they are prepared.

HOUSING

Louisiana: Any person...who shall rent any part of any such building to a negro person or a negro family when such building is already in whole or in part in occupancy by a white person or white family shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

Mississippi: The prison warden shall see that the white convicts shall have separate apartments for both eating and sleeping from the negro convicts.

LIBRARIES

Texas: Negroes are to be served through a separate branch or branches of the county free library, which shall be administered by a custodian of the negro race under the supervision of the county librarian.

North Carolina: The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals.

MARRIAGE

Arizona: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro shall be null and void.

Florida: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited.

Florida: Any negro man and white woman, or any white man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room, shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding 12 months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars.

Maryland: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent, to the third generation, inclusive…are forever prohibited, and shall be void.

Mississippi: The marriage of a white person with a negro or mulatto or person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood, shall be unlawful and void.

Wyoming: All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malaya hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are, and shall be, illegal and void.

SERVICES

Georgia: No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.

Georgia: The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons.

TRANSPORTATION

Alabama: All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races.

Alabama: The conductor of each passenger train is authorized and required to assign each passenger to the car or the division of the car, when it is divided by a partition, designated for the race to which such passenger belongs. Maryland: All railroad companies are hereby required to provide separate cars or coaches for the travel and transportation of the white and colored passengers.

WORK

Oklahoma: The baths and lockers for the negroes shall be separate from the white race, but may be in the same building. (Mining companies)

My point is that you and David are soaked in guilt, and it isn't even based on anything you've done, it's some kind of blanket group guilt for all whites which, since you FEEL it more than other whites, makes you superior to other whites, and that's the whole point.

Finally a blow for ecumenism: the Chaplain of the House of Representatives, Roman Catholic priest Daniel Coughlin, said a prayer after lunch. He was the first non-Protestant I've seen pray at this thing.

A diocesan priest from Chicago, Fr. Coughlin was apparently selected as chaplain by Denny Hastert.

We thank you for the empowering of thy servant, our 44th president, to inspire our nation to believe that, yes, we can work together to achieve a more perfect union. And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.

Okay, not as "either you're with Barack or against God" as I thought. Jeeps are noisy vehicles.

However, what I didn't hear, the "work for that day when...white will embrace what is right" is pure racism. I can think of no other way to describe it. Can you?

Not only were whites singled out as racist oppressors, but the singling out was done at the inauguration of, HELLO!, a black man.

I keep waiting for the Obama I like to think is present inside him to speak out against this.

In my mind, he's that post-racial guy who disapproves of race-rhetoric of the Civil Rights era kind. You know, the Dick Gregory/Bobby Rush kind, where whites are the perpetual devils.

But I am faced with a guy who is married to a woman most people suspect does not like white people, a pastor of 20 years to whom he entrusted his daughter's religious mentoring, who sounds like the flip version of a Clansman, and who refuses to distance himself from race-baiters like Jackson and Lowery.

Maybe race is not his thing, though. Maybe he's traded race for politics, since his inaugural address reads like one glove slap after another to Bush and Republicans. The cynical thanks fronting it acts as a handy excuse to start in on them.

“One of the strangest things about the career of Jim Crow was that the system was born in the North and reached an advanced age before moving South in force.” --C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Ohio adopted laws outlawing interracial marriage and permitting school segregation in 1877. To the state’s credit, these were repealed about 10 years later.

Illinois adopted laws outlawing school segregation and discrimination in public accommodations in the 1880’s and 1890’s. However, Illinois was a leader in adopting and enforcing restrictive private covenants in housing developments.

Wisconsin appears not to have adopted Jim Crow laws and had antidiscrimination laws on the books.

California had numerous Jim Crow laws relating to intermarriage, school segregation and voting. In 1870 school segregation was required. It was repealed in 1880 and reinstituted on a permissive basis in 1902. The majority of these laws were directed at Asians but the school segregation and intermarriage laws applied to Negroes also.

Those are the facts, but I still don’t get your point. Even if there had been no Jim Crow laws “where you worked” your comparison of the effect of Jim Crow with supposed discrimination against heterosexuals (!) is mind boggling. Jim Crow was a repressive legalized attempt to make entire groups into second class citizens. Although we have to endure some PC silliness and occasional (in my opinion) outright discrimination in the name of political correctness, there is no comparison to the oppression of Jim Crow.

Anyone who knows me would tell you that I am far from soaked in guilt. Mostly I hear "you have no shame."

I feel no guilt for the sins of the past, and damn little for my own. But facts are facts. Your entire sense of history is off kilter if you think the stuff you are complaining of is anything like Jim Crow.

There is some bad behavior of the PC left, but it isn't enshrined in law. Law is quite a different thing. If there was an actual law that said that white heterosexuals couldn't work with the multicultural elite, etc., that would be like a Jim Crow law. There's some teasing, even some meanness in extreme cases, but none of it is reinforced by law. Ricpic is just exaggerating for effect.

Or else Ricpic is extremely sensitive and really feels this way.

Some groups of PC intellectuals are really extremely mean in a few places, in a few cases.

But most of the left are really fairly polite unless you egg them on mercilessly, in which case they will ultimately turn into hornets.

But then they will mostly feel bad.

I got the sense that the lynch mobs of the deep south wouldn't even feel bad about what they had done, which wasn't just teasing, but actually killing.

AlphaLiberal said..."The left is already criticizing Obama when we disagree with him. Difference with con's is, we do it civilly."

That goes beyond self-parody. You may well disagree civilly with Obama, but you - both you generally and you particularly - are uncouth and uncivil at every turn about those with who you disagree on any but trivial points.

"Obama is asking us all to put the recriminations and petty partisan warfare of the past behind us."

Pure 100% hogwashed bullshit. He is demanding that the people on the other side surrender and march to the beat of his drum. Weren't you listening to the speech? Haven't you been paying attention to this guy? He's a straight down the line liberal telling everyone else to shut up and get in line behind his "shared cause."

Just remember, the One has opened up the listening equiptment of the African americans. A stubborn unwillingness to listen to White Man's rules has robbed many generations of potentially good people by leaving them out of full particpation in the society. You could say Obama can rescue those people by removing the stumbling block that caused them to see White Mans Rules as their enemy instead of everyone's friend. The only losers will be Black Con-men who had been free to prey on other Blacks by asserting racial loyalty to blind their marks.

Very disappointing speech, no phrase monumental or gorgeous enough to grab and hold to your heart. Too bad.

The stock market heard the same oversold, gassy scraps I did, and voted by selling off deeply. The market took care to be ready for greatness. Though it had a mild pullback early, indexes held right at the perfect "support" area through the noon speech, so they were poised to soar with the slightest excuse from the new President. The greatness didn't present himself, however, and the market systematically sold and sold and sold into the close.

I just looked up Michelle Obama's dress because others had mentioned it. I love it. More dresses like this and the red one she wore when she and Barack went to the White House to visit the Bush family.

Sorry but I thought Michele's Inaugural outfit was a miss. It looked more like something the Queen might wear; it was aging for such a vibrant woman and buttery kidskin gloves would have been a better choice than the shiny green leather.

However, the girls were darling and perfectly age appropriate and Michele's ivory Jason Wu evening gown was smashing.